A telling moment came near the end of President Clinton's
masterful State of the Union address when he harangued the
Republican-controlled Congress to "never, ever shut the federal
government down again." On the Republican side of the aisle, Sen. Trent
Lott turned to Sen. Alfonse D'Amato with a look of smiling exasperation.

"This guy is shameless," Lott remembers saying to D'Amato. "He shut
down the government." Even before Tuesday night, Republicans were
complaining about public perceptions. Clinton had vetoed appropriations
bills, continuing resolutions and a balanced budget. That handed
Congress an ultimatum: Yield to me, or close the government. Yet the
public blamed Congress, not the president, according to polls.

Clinton's address aggravated GOP frustration. While he adopted
conservative rhetoric in proclaiming that "the era of big government is
over," all his proposals involve government action. After 55 hours of
stonewalling in meetings with GOP leaders, he pleaded with Republicans
to return to the table. After vetoing two welfare reform proposals, he
called for a bipartisan plan.

He also continued his habit of interspersing calls for
reconciliation with viciously partisan assaults, such as this bitter
indictment of the Republican Congress: "Lobbyists for the polluters have
been allowed to write their own loopholes into bills, to weaken laws
that protect health and safety of our children." The pain on the face of
conscientious Republican Sen. Pete Domenici, certainly not pro-polluter,
was palpa\ble.

When previewed Monday to some of us columnists by White House Chief
of Staff Leon Panetta, the president's speech sounded like a policy
wonk's dream. Its multiple provisions suggest compulsively intrusive
government, seeking to control content of television programs and
mandate uniforms for children in public schools. Clintonian gimmickry is
seen in his proposed $1,000 scholarship for good students and denial of
federal contracts to companies that hire illegal immigrants.

This laundry list of disconnected proposals was turned into an
effective speech by Clinton's delivery and staging. He followed Ronald
Reagan's precedent in stacking the galleries with heroic figures and
celebrating patriotism and service.

It is never easy for the opposition party to answer an effective
State of the Union address (as Tuesday night's was and as Clinton's 1994
and 1995 efforts were not). As the front-runner for his party's
presidential nomination, Senate Majority Leader Robert J. Dole should
not have taken on this impossible assignment but instead should have
passed it on to somebody else. But he insisted, and nobody dared tell
him not to.

In comparison to Clinton's easy-flowing oratory, Dole looked old,
tired and wooden. His supporters blame the Teleprompter operator, but
that was not his only problem. Colleagues pleaded with him to respond
before an audience, outdoors or perhaps on the House floor after the
president left. For a brief moment, Dole was going to speak from his
hometown of Russell, Kan. That was discarded in favor of a sterile,
nondescript office environment.

Staging aside, Dole's 10-minute speech was much better written than
the president's hour-long ramble, which showed tell-tale touches of
Clinton's own pen. But Dole's harsh rejection of elitism, liberalism and
the welfare state could have been written in 1936 rather than 1996.

Dole is not the most effective apostle of the Republican
Revolution. But even that movement's great visionary, House Speaker Newt
Gingrich, was not at his best Wednesday morning. Instead of painting a
bright and shining future, Gingrich underlined the need for the
president to reduce entitlements and proposed melding the debt ceiling
bill with spending cuts agreed to by Clinton  nothing to stir the
heart.

The reason neither Dole nor Gingrich could effectively answer
Clinton is that the State of the Union follows a bad five months for the
GOP after the brilliant start in 1995. Republican leaders made the error
of underestimating Clinton's willingness to shut down government and
default on the debt rather than yield, as well as his ability to sell
his message to the public.

The Republicans know what kind of government they want, even more
clearly than Clinton does. But today, they lack creative means of
getting there, and that is an immense advantage for the president.